Honoring a vision

Artists Hall of Fame to welcome late St. Augustine painter

The Florida Artists Hall of Fame will welcome a new member Monday when the late St. Augustine folk artist Earl Cunningham is inducted by Secretary of State Glenda Hood.

Cunningham, who painted for nearly 30 years in St. Augustine from the Over Fork Gallery, first on St. George Street and later on North Ponce de Leon Boulevard, will be honored at a ceremony from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Mennello Museum of American Folk Art in Orlando.

Marilyn and Michael Mennello, major collectors of his work, and founders of the Mennello Museum, will accept the award on his behalf. Cunningham committed suicide in St. Augustine in 1977, having moved to the city in 1949.

Winter Park residents, the Mennellos worked with Hood and the city of Orlando to open the Mennello Museum that includes many of Cunningham's works.

"I think Mr. Cunningham would be terribly thrilled by this," said Marilyn Mennello in a telephone interview from her home last week.

click photo to enlarge

The Everglades,' circa 1950

Mennello Museum of American Folk Art

She said Cunningham always envisioned that his collection of paintings would be shown collectively in a museum. "He referred to them as his children," she said.

"He is truly a genius," Marilyn Mennello said of his work. "His paintings are liveable, fabulous."

The Mennellos introduced Hood, then Orlando's mayor, to Cunningham's works. They credit her with the vision to have a public museum established for the collection.

"The vision and imagination of Earl Cunningham has produced a wonderful collection of vibrant folk art for the world to enjoy," said Hood recently in a statement released by her Tallahassee office.

The Mennello Museum was established in 1998.

click photo to enlarge

Cunningham with Marilyn Mennello in 1970.

Mennello Museum of American Folk Art

In the 1998 catalog to the exhibit, "Earl Cunningham, Dreams Realized," Hood said, "Earl Cunningham's works are endlessly inventive and boldly colorful. ... His vision imagery and style add a dazzling facet to the kaleidoscope of American folk art."

Marilyn Mennello first met Cunningham on a visit to St. Augustine in 1969 with her friend Jane Dart from California. They had come to the city because Dart had not seen St. Augustine before.

A stop at the Over Fork Gallery on St. George Street, as Marilyn said in a recent interview, was "fate."

She said that although Cunningham was initially resistant to selling any of his works, he allowed her and Dart to each purchase a painting. But he wanted $500 each and he wanted it in cash. That necessitated a return trip from Winter Park at which time Mennello paid for the two paintings.

Mennello chose "View from the Widow's Walk" and Dart's was untitled.

When Marilyn asked Cunningham then why he would not sell his paintings individually, he told her that someone was going to come along with $40,000 someday and buy them all.

Sometime after his death, the Mennellos purchased 62 of his paintings in one lot and then others over the years since.

Marilyn is not sure how many they still own. Last fall, they donated "Camp David" to President Bush in a brief White House ceremony.

They donated 40 of their own to the Mennello Museum for its permanent collection and others of their private collections are rotated for display from time to time, she said.

Cunningham, she said, painted more than 400 scenes.

Robert Harper, director of St. Augustine's Lightner Museum, has one of Cunningham's works on display. "We have the only publicly owned Cunningham in St. Augustine," Harper said in an interview on Friday.

When Mennello was asked why a museum of Cunningham's works was not established in St. Augustine, she said she believed that he was not accepted by the art community in the city. "Even the Art Association sold the painting it had," she said.

Harper said Cunningham was different from other St. Augustine artists.

"I think the community in general was not aware of him," he said. "He was a primitive painter. The St. Augustine art style is local scenery, plain air, street scenery.

"What Earl Cunningham painted, just came from his mind, he was painting from his imagination," Harper said.

"Earl Cunningham is a major American painter but it is an acquired taste."

Comparing him to Grandma Moses, another well-known American folk artist, Harper said her work is "sweeter."

Cunningham's he described as "gutsier."

While the Mennellos have helped elevate Cunningham's art in American folk art, Harper said Theresia (Tese) Paffe, Cunningham's landlady at the time, was his patron.

"She allowed him to paint," Harper said. "He didn't have to go to work like the rest of us. Without her patronage, he wouldn't have accomplished what he did."

The Lightner, Harper said, received its Cunningham painting from Paffe after Cunningham's death. Painted in 1965, it is titled "Seminole Village with Lavender Sky."

Harper said the painting was a thank-you from Paffe because of help the museum had given her after Cunningham's death in relation to the collection.

Harper said Paffe had given Cunningham's works to the local museums because she wanted to ensure that his works would be on display in the city from which he had painted.

In addition to the Lightner, the Mennello Museum, the Orlando Museum of Art and the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, Cunningham's work is in national collections.

Among them are the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Va., and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His paintings have been in travelling exhibits and been displayed in several U.S. Embassies as part of the Department of State's Art in Embassies program.

In 2007, Mennello said, Cunningham will be the first folk artist to have a one-man exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

This September, she said, the Public Broadcasting System plans to air a documentary about Cunningham.

The Florida Artists Hall of Fame was created by an act of the Florida Legislature in 1986. It recognizes people, living and deceased, who have made significant contributions to the arts in Florida, either as performers or practicing artists in individual disciplines.

Those chosen, according to the guidelines of the Florida Department of State, contribute to Florida's national or international reputation as a state with a strong and sustained commitment toward the development of cultural excellence.

Among those who have been inducted with ties to St. Johns County are singer Ray Charles, artist Martin Johnson Heade, folk singer/storyteller Gamble Rogers, and authors Elaine Konigsburg and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

The state awards each inductee a bronze sculpture, La Florida, commissioned by the Florida Arts Council and created by Enzo Torcoletti, a St. Augustine sculptor and faculty member of Flagler College.

The Mennello Museum of American Folk Art is located at 900 East Princeton St., Orlando, FL 32803. For more information, call (407) 246-4278 or see its Web site at www.mennellomuseum.com .